In the related art, a ribbon transfer type printer is equipped with a function (ribbon saving) of reducing consumption of an ink ribbon by stopping transport of an ink ribbon to a non-printing area. Although the condition for performing ribbon saving depends on the dimension of the non-printing area, in the related art, since it is determined whether or not to perform ribbon saving based on only the dimension of the non-printing area in one piece of printing layout, consumption of the ink ribbon may efficiently not be reduced.